Appearance Matters (but not in the way you might think)

I guess I feel a need to address this subject because of the many children I encounter at school whose parents apparently have NO concern about it.
It is my feeling that every child can be clean and well-groomed in spite of their sociology-economic background.

This, to me, is another way of making sure they feel good about themselves.

For one thing, I always made sure the childrens' hair was trimmed and OUT OF THEIR EYES (forget Nadia's 8th grade picture!). I am not a beautician but I always paid attention when I was at a salon and I would ask questions. I guess that is why I am able to cut hair to some degree. I still trim the girls' hair from time to time and can manage a decent blunt cut. I cut boys' hair when they were small and now only give an infrequent touch-up here and there.

In school, I insisted on compliance with uniform regulations and dress codes. It annoyed me that many parents did not. If children do not learn early on that certain types of clothing are unacceptable in certain situations, there is no magic wand that someone is going to wave when they are 18 or 21 that is going to change their habits.

My mother always thought that my kids' shoes should be cleaner(who in the world ever got the
white shoe thing going anyway?), but I did the best I could!

On to 2012!
A few words of explanation....the hair thing bothered me so much because so many children were distracted by their own hair in the classroom, constantly pushing it out of their eyes and so on, taking away from their learning time. You could tell that many had never been taught to use a brush or a comb either. I have other opinions about hair, but I won't go into them right now!
Today at least some of the public schools have adopted uniforms, which has improved the overall appearance of their students greatly! The first time I drove by a school playground in our urban neighborhood, I was so impressed! I wore uniforms from grades 1-12 and my children wore both uniforms and street clothes, and, as a parent, I can tell you that the uniform thing meant less hassle overall in our household! There was no question about what you were wearing when you got up in the morning....and no wondering if this went with that and so on!

Of course, over the years things have gotten out of control in some areas too, such as the "designer" clothing thing, where labels came to mean too much! We went through some of that,
though usually a little "late"....I remember fighting "Black Friday" crowds for SWATCH shirts!

Nowadays, the whole "body image" thing is so far out of control that it has become, in many cases, a matter of life or death! So very sad...I hope that, at some point, we can return to our senses and to the appreciation of persons for what is inside their hearts:0)